Become Fluent in Any Language

Lesson 29 of 31

Method Review

Become Fluent in Any Language

Lesson 29 of 31

Method Review

Lesson Info

Method Review

So let's, talk about a little bit about this sort of a summary of what we done, uh, because we're gonna get into sort of mushy, fun stuff at the last the next segment. But right now I kind of want to go through. What are all the things we did throughout this workshop? What are we talking about doing right now? And how does all this fit together? So in some of the earlier segments, uh, in some of the very first one seconds, two and three are three and four. We talked about sounds when we talked about how you train your ears and then you train your mouth to do what your ears cannot hear. You train your eyes to actually recognize how the spelling connects with all these three things. Once you have the sound system down, you start learning words, simple words. You start being able to point at things and say, this is that this is that starting up to think in your target's language, you play these games, you play the spot, the differences game. You start learning how your words are different...

from what you think they would be. You look at how the differences are between babushka on girl between french dogs and italian dogs, and german dogs and dog dogs you pick personal connections. You find ways that this cat connects with your own cat you find ways that this eye connects with the fact that why are all the I's feminine? Well, let me think of a feminine I that I like you put that in your flashcards put the name of the person who's ay you think about when you think of I er and you play these demonic games, you start identifying okay? Well, what am I gonna explode this thing? Am I gonna take this abstract bit of garbage that's really hard to remember? And I'm not gonna turn into something that's fun and interesting and visual and memorize it that way. Then you play these games with your first words. You build this foundation and if you're doing japanese air mandarin, then you start playing around with the counter words. Perhaps you start running out the sentences. You take a few examples from your grammar book you don't take everything. You just take a few one or two things drills you look at one or two examples of every grammar rule and you convert them. You split them apart into new words word form cards and word order cards such that you take every little complicated grammar thing and you split it up into the smallest little bits easy to learn bits you memorize those one by one on flash cards and the program will always test you on the ones you want to know if you need to know anything that's easy the program's just gonna send us in the future um you use output, you write things to create more stories. If your grammar book is missing stories, if it just gives you one or two examples then throws a dick lantian chart out you brought in that out, you write it yourself, uh for one to involve yourself in your language and too just so you have more stories to play with so that you can turn to clench in charge what's your really abstract and hard to learn into something that is simple, something concrete, something that is grounded in what you are seeing and when you can get a picture for this kind of thing. And yes, you use google images to get pictures all the way through, and so that was the structure of it. But this is the part where you play and so the first part that you play with his that I would suggest there's a lot of ways to do it. You can you know this was the idea of if you want more vocabulary, learn more for caballero's you want more listening? Listen more but here's the recommended order there's what I'd suggest you do you learn half your grammar book first I say half of your grammar book because usually the first half of a grammar book is going to tell you everything you need to know in terms of the things you absolutely must have its gonna be things like how do you use a verb at all? You know what is the past tense do how do you talk about things that happened? How about I talk about things that will happen? You know, howto adjectives work this kind of thing and then the second half usually starts talking about things that are more specific. Now books will vary. And this well, this is not like a strict acting like go find the number of pages in the book divide by two and a stop there, but you are trying to get what is the basics of how do I use this language to talk about things that are in the past now in the future and talk about things in general? And then at some point your book will split into things like here's, how you do reported speech, you know, she said that it was good she said that they were going to the store. The press reported this kind, like these sort of nit picky things that you may need or you may not some grammar is only for particular purposes in french. In italian, they have the well italian has the passat remote oh, this this old past tense that is used only for history books and harry potter and things like this. Where there many years ago it happened and that's great if you're reading those kinds of things, but if you're trying to to speak and handle yourself in a cafe, then you could skip over that stuff. He's doesn't italian you need, and so you want to learn the basics. First you get your basics down and then you learn your top thousand words you go to your frequency dictionary, he buy the dictionary. Is the dictionary so much easier to use? And you pick up your top thousand words after around word five hundred note that many of these words you already have the six hundred twenty five words that you learn in the beginning, a lot of overlaps over here. Most languages use the same sort of words you know, mod that a mother is going to be in this you're not going to need it because you ready know it, but he go through these words and after around word five hundred you're going to be ableto handle a monolingual dictionary maybe a little later in mandarin and japanese may be a little earlier in french and, uh, foreign talent, and you start using a modeling a dictionary as soon as you can you start adding definitions to your flashcards to because it broadens out. The network makes each word connective. Five more words, then you skim through the rest of your grammar book. You see what I want may be it's a basic book, and you kind of want everything. Or maybe it's a really advance spoke. It covers every single little nit picky thing in your language. And you could go through me like I don't need that. I'm not going to read newspapers. I don't want to read a newspaper in french, so I do not need that grammar. Not right now. Maybe I can get it later. You skim through you see what you want. If you want something, you pick a few examples and you put them in your flashcards. Then I would suggest you read a book. Read your very first book. I'm right here in hungarian. I'm gonna start reading my first book in a few weeks. It's gonna be fun, the hobbit. But, uh, I'm going to read a summary ahead of time because I like this idea. I have not actually tried that before. I got this new about the movie thing about reading summaries of movies ahead of time and watching our tv shows. Instantly you can use those summaries to handle movies a little better know those first two hours that suck and then the movie's over you read the summary and then you ready no in the first two hours actually enjoyable um but I would read a book at the stage at the point where you're basically threw the grammar I would read a book with the audio book excited about the habit you watch a tv siri's at that point you had just had eighteen hours of audio in your head someone is yeah bird out yemen at you at eighteen hours and hungarian about hobbits and dragons and things and you are ready to watch a tv series in hungarian I hope we'll see how they are they'd start going to crazy hungarian dialect or something of the interesting but you pre read with wikipedia and at this point you should be able to handle a tv series just fine when you washed through a good eighteen hours of tv pick something and actually so it's fun and then you speak as much as you possibly can you speak speak, speak, speak you find a tutor and I talking and you chat away you never switch back to english you go through a frequency list you go through words one one thousand one two two thousand if you need to they start chatting about those because they will form really interesting conversations and you make flash cards all the way through and then you repeat as desired you go back and you say, well, what do I want for my language don't want to get better at reading driver did I really enjoy myself with that harry potter book? Why don't I read books too that I really like that tv serious? Why don't I watch another another season of it? Maybe I just like talking maybe I should go travel at this point you really get to do whatever you want and at any point you get to do whatever you want. I mean, this is about enjoying yourself this is about finding the parts of the language learning process that feel you that make you feel good and build that language further in your head. At this point, any input you get is going to make your language better, so you want to do that? So at this point we have a little bit of time, I believe I do. You do have time. So what do we have? Course is, uh gabe is outlined it and what we've covered that you'd like to just ask gabe at this point, yes, tom is save you start with a language that you already know same from some information about and well, what would you suggest for them let's say they're pronunciation isn't very good would you where would you suggest for them sir let's say their vocabularies very good but the grammar is good this is a good question yeah thank you if I'm coming into a language as an intermediate these things change a little bit um for instance let's kind of go through this process all the way through I come into this I've taken four years of french I mean I think there's going to be a common experience for a lot of people out there which is uh you've gone through college you've taken four years of a language you've left college maybe you're five ten years out of college and you've forgotten like everything when you come back in like well, where do I start? Well, you need to first self assess you say okay where where did I get to where was I then? Where am I if you had really really good training in college if your teachers had fabulous accents and you sound french you can read a text and it said it sounds playful say and people just think oh wow you speak french and you like now I can only just sort of read this stuff I mean is this kind of sounds like it but I don't know anything anything then this year training phase this idea of ok well, you need to, like really get your ears down needed to work on pronunciation maybe not maybe that is not as important for you because you sound type all say sound great if on the other hand you had a bunch of sort of american sounding teachers and you sound trey france eh? And jay par les francais tray beyond you probably need to work on your training just like a beginner in terms of spelling you probably find I mean if you've taken four years of french there will be some example some points where you may have problems you may run into spelling rules that you can't handle things like these s is at the end of words that desk artie's experience things like that and I make the same mistakes too in french I mean on the effect this idea of, you know, creative live uh I wasn't sure if that was deep a direct that ct thing and french is kind of obnoxious sometimes this way sometimes is that way uh these sorts of spelling rules you may need some review and so for the cards that you need for the things you need to review on if you have a few words that you're like, you know, I really don't know what the rule is there look up the rules learn the words that way learn a few example words so that the next time you see those words you think, oh yeah, yeah, yeah that's that rule that I didn't know that well four years ago, but now I'm learning again now, um, in terms of mouth training, this is these year training amount training really linked? I mean, if you if you parlay uh bien francais, then you also have some training to do, and so in these early stages, you either have work to do or you don't and the work you do it will either be the same as a beginner or not. The main difference is that you probably not need these spelling cards nearly as much in terms of this early phase of learning. Cem words, if you know a word already, skip it with these six hundred twenty five words these air great words to know you should know all of them they're really basic. I mean these with words like mother, father, like you should know how to say mother and father and french if you've taken four years of french and you don't know the word for mother, you should learn it now. But if you do know the word for mother and you are thinking in english, you look a man and you think, oh, that's the french word for mother and then you look at this system and you're like, well, but I don't, I shouldn't translate in my head well, yes, you shouldn't translate in your head, but clearly you know what this word means and if you make a flash card for it and have pictures of mothers and things like that it's going to get kind of boring and so I wouldn't recommend doing it, I'd recommend focusing on other words I'd suggest that you go through this list, you find the words that you cannot translate because most more than likely, if you've done four years of french, you have translated in your head and you will be doing translating, but if you look through this listen, you say, well, I have no idea what where that is I don't know what the translation of that is then great learn those words you'll probably find that you have maybe one hundred twenty five words to learn in this in this style and do so I mean, learn those words play the spot, the difference escape play, the personal connections came and you start learning to use new monix for grammar. If you need a few grammar rules, then go get them from your grammar book. If you go through and you're not sure, then go get them but the main actual thing that I would do it this phase if you're an intermediate is I would skip the grammar book for now if you can kind of articulate yourself if you can kind of write in french and if you can't, then yes, go through your grammar book just crab like one or two examples from all over the place and just kind of get some french back into your head to every page. Just take one example from every page your book every two pages, every three pages, just find some rate of thing and grab an example from every every two pages that's fine, get the french back into your head, get it so that you kind of vaguely remember what the grammar is and then start writing. This is what I'm gonna be doing for my french at some point in the event that I have children and I decide that I want to teach those kids french, and I want to be fluid, fluid, fluent french of at some point, I want to make my french perfect it isn't, then what I'm gonna be doing is I'm going to be writing in french, I'm going to skip the grammar book and I'm just going to write and I'm going to say, this is what I did today, and I'm gonna write it, I'm gonna make us many mistakes as I can, and I'm gonna send them all the link gate I'm gonna get corrections that are going to tell me exactly where my holes are in my grammar and so that is going to be the customized course that is adapting to my particular needs in terms of me being an intermediate army, being advanced is the case with french I'm in advance, but I'm certainly going to make tons of mistakes, and so I'm going to write about these things, get the customized input I need and make that into flash cards, and that is going to be my main tool for progressing when I'm in intermediate. And so in terms of this learning half of the grammar book, no, not really in terms of learning your top thousand that's not a bad thing to do, but the main thing is going to be writing and then playing around with books and audio, as I wish that point, I'm already at the repeat as desired face, because I've already spoken french, I've already written in french, I've already listened to french, and I've already read some books, I could do whatever I wanted that point, and so I'm going to start assessing my own needs and adapting in that way, but writing is kind of qi if you're ready in intermediate that's kind of where I would focus yourself was when you riding the metro, whatever, you actually tend to talk out loud? Oh, yeah, and you're actually learning, and we did get some question about people saying maybe just about poetry or anything to improve pronunciation do you really recommend that as something as a really good way to immerse yourself doc chuo toko asking yes, I would say that that as you trained your ears uh you become able to self correct if you know what the sounds are supposed to be, then when something comes out of your mouth that is ridiculous you will hear the ridiculousness and think hoops I said that wrong and you'll be able to start correcting them and so what you need is practise of saying things out loud and so what I tend to do is that every time I read my flash cards I just mumbled it allows I can wherever I am it drives people on subways nuts I think I'm crazy that's awesome just vacate and I think that speaking out loud as much as you can is really very helpful and the flashcards are nice when you're doing it because they give you all sorts of random content I mean, you don't know what you're going to see next and so if you're reading along the flash cards you just reading out loud as you see, I mean, I could go into a donkey right now and I can start look, you know, reading my cards and I could be well spell this word that's a sure she s c h yeah and I am share okay corny prosecuting colin hart cornejo are sickening how I got the r own heart hostage oh yeah land deal then you keep going cornell's ticketing me this is what's going in order because I haven't randomized sit on for sale on pleasure and I just keep sort of switching accents I mean I usually don't do a mix of a bunch of languages at once but I was just I'm staying in one language and I'm just kind of mumbling into myself the whole time through and that helps train your mouth because as you're hearing yourself you could self correct it's the problem is when you don't have your ears down when your ears aren't actually attuned to the language that you're learning that speaking isn't actually that helpful necessarily and if you can actually hear the difference between your accents and like a good authentic french accent if you're just parlaying francais and your parlaying francais to yourself is actually reinforcing bad habits need to be able to hear the difference between what you need to be doing what you are doing at that point speaking is actually very very effective recognition software help with that I have not yet encountered speech recognition software that has helped but I think that's on it's coming and I think there may well be some companies that have come up with some stuff that is good but I haven't yet seen it how much content with more do we have that we don't know the question I carry a cross that you and I discussed really briefly after a previous session and that is we've had a few people talking about, um either being the teacher and teaching this to other people this flash cards or teaching it using the same system but for children and you had a couple of really interesting thoughts on adapting it for children sure, yes, for children children are going it depends on what age you're talking about if you're talking about teenagers and stuff this just teach him this yeah, I mean, this is fun, I mean, generally teenagers are probably better than most of us have computers. The idea of playing around with google images and internet means that most of those internet means air written by teenagers you think they'd be all over it's fun? The question yesterday was that somebody was talking about a ten year old slightly nuance and so that shifts with age with the teenagers just this in fact they're likely more than many people I mean more than sort of forty or fifty year olds uh, because computers but a ten year old is not gonna be able to handle all this there's a lot and also some of the content that you're going to see on google images is going to be racy at times and for a ten year old it might be inappropriate for a five year old is gonna be appropriate I mean there's some issues there and so what I would recommend is are the analog methods we talked about in session too. Uh if you start going with through with the child and teaching them how to use flash cards with images and choosing personal connections and for them to draw their own little cat that our own little french cat and if you do go through google images and you say okay, here was a front here here's what the french people think of when they think of kat you know, what do you think about this? Is this difference this? What do you think you're going to sea with a cat at home and your kid will say, well, that's weird these cats are all kind of tiny and french. Yes, indeed they are. Can you draw a picture of a tiny french cat and they will say, yes, I can and they do can you write shot on the back side of this card? Say yes I can and can you teach them the rules of the lightner box game? Can you teach them that they go through okay, hand them stack one and say, go through these cards which ones do you know you quizzed them and they get the certain ones right? You move them into level three and they get certain ones running you move them down to level one then you go through all the level one cars and say how can we get them all right and you get them all right and you move them all up into the next level and your kid's gonna keep having this experience of success I keep having this experience of actually learning a language in the language and they're actually gonna grow their vocabulary quite a bit that's where I would start if the cure kid actually starts really progressing if you're talking about a ten year old who was now an eleven year old, a twelve year old who actually has some vocabulary under their belt has a good accent under their belt you can quiz them and you can I mean you can run the computer program in terms of the minimal pear stuff you can just press the buttons for them if they can't handle that kind of thing, then you are training their ear in the language that they wanted that you want them to learn you're getting their mouth to cooperate and you're teaching them a bunch of vocabulary you're teaching them spelling at a certain point they're gonna be ableto handle sentences you can walk them through this process and analog flash cards I think it probably your best bet for that this's a very specific, I think, for your alternate life gape he's saying, as a singer does adding melodia music add to improving memory how you remember language, the thing with singing is that it's rote learning, when you were learning an aria in opera, these kinds of things are very, very fixed texts on your trying to get from the beginning of them to the end of them in the exact same way every time I mean, with some interpretation of a nonetheless you're trying, you're not changing the text as you go, uh, singing in text and being able to speak fluently are very, very different now being able to speak fluently changes how you sing a sze yu. Learn more about this language as you are become able to think in the language, you start expressing yourself in a very different way, and so that changes things quite a bit. There is it's fun actually watching student recitals. You want student recitals in austria, for instance. You see people from all over everywhere, and you washed them all singing in german, and they sing in german and people will clap ineffably beautiful and all that, and then the very last segment of many, many recitals the teachers will tell their students, okay, seeing something in your native language and so the koreans will sing something in korean, and the croatians will sing some beautiful think oration, all this stuff and everything americans will sing some folk song put on a cowboy hat and things that's, what americans do all americans wear cowboy hats, and suddenly everyone is on the edge of their seats and everyone has engaged, and it doesn't matter if you don't speak a word of korean you're like, wow, that was amazing, because there is a wall that vanishes as soon as you start speaking in something, you can think it, and you'll see that sometimes with the german stuff. If someone is familiar enough with german that they can actually think with it, then that while will vanish also, but sink. But actually being able to think in the language you are singing and actually being able to express yourself directly is a huge thing. It's, really what language learning is about kind of get to that in the next segment, but in terms of does melody helpyou, does melody help you learn things? Melody helps you learn things by rote. And learning things by road is not a bad thing having long text in your head is a good thing I mean me showing up tio two french for instance having a bunch of memorized french art songs where I didn't really know what the words meant but then as I learned the words I was like oh yeah that's part of that song it's me it's a bonus um but in terms of an efficient learning technique I would say it's it's helpful to have done it's not something I would see up okay, good to know your question um I don't know if you've gone through this but maybe one of your students have um and I wanted to know what if you wanted to for example, if I if my sister had a very deep interest in mandarin same his eye how would we study together or maybe your significant other or a cousin that you both want to travel to japan in a year or you want to go like climb mount everest and you come from, uh poor too gone yeah did say you want to learn very specific language and it's in two or three people at the same time how how would you how have you seen thiss sort of mechanic play out that's a wonderful question um I have a student a pair of students to private students uh actually, as you're watching high uh uh it's, an old singing teacher of mine on his wife, they were learning italian together. Um and I taught them this whole system from start to finish, and they began and with the minimal pairs they were both had they had their separate flashcards systems, they had two laptops, they were both wearing the minimal paris, but they're learning them at the same time. And so they were kind of coming home every day, playing with their flash cars and sort of talking about italian together. And then they started learning their their example words, they started correcting each other. Good night they're like no, no, no, you're saying it wrong state like this uh and it became this sort of game between the two of them. It was really cute to watch is I mean, it was weird doing this over multiple days I kept coming in one week and showing them how to do this, and then a few weeks later, I'd come and show them how to do the next thing. And so I found out that when I came back to teach them about simple words, I found out that for the last few weeks they have been sort of bickering about no, no, no, you say it this way, it's really cute then they started learning those simple words and I told them you know, they were like can we both use the same images and I said you can but you need deters them individually and what they found is that they're both at their laptops they're both working on the same words per day we both said ok, we're gonna learn these thirty words today we're gonna put these words in our flash cards and they would all like separately they were not looking each other's computers they would choose images that would sort of captured what is the italian sense of cat what is the italian sense of laptop what what italians think of when they think of books and then they would sort of looked at each other's cards oh ho ho you chose that one yours like you're you're sick like what's wrong with you and they would just sort of they had this sort of banter between them where they're both doing this process together it's a game that they're both playing individually but they're both playing and they're both having fun and they're both talking about it with each other and it was it was just it was touching honestly as a teacher watching this where you just see these people it makes the relationship better I mean it is sharing this experience of building a language they are building individually separately but they're sharing in the experience of building it together um, in terms of sharing it, you can share the same vocabulary. You can learn the same words. And in their case, for instance, one of them was much faster making their flash cards that's. The other one had to work harder and that's fine. Uh, at a certain point, when they started getting to grammar and stuff, it became it started separating in terms of what they were learning. Uh, because you go off on different tangents. You know why we were doing some example of forget the full see, feel safe and things like that where we were jumping from word toward the word the word and I might find these words interesting, and you might find these other words interesting. And so you might go on completely different chains and pick up different vocabulary. But as you pick up different vocabulary because this is a fun process, because this is something that you are doing out of enjoyment and because you are sharing it with someone else. And as we talked about with goals as you have goals that connect you with someone else, especially with your own partner, um it becomes this thing you shares becomes this thing you can talk about, you can say, hey, I just saw it look at this thing ice look at this flash card I mean, I even do this at home with my girlfriend I like she doesn't speak any hungarian I bring out this flash kind of like looked with what the hungarians say because this ridiculous like I'll translate every word for her and be like, look at this and she's like oh my god really er and so we have these experiences of doing this where this is it enhances your life and if it enhances your life and you're doing it with a partner enhances both of your lives together uh and so it is a really fun thing to do with the partner something I'm really looking forward to do with japanese actually but uh yeah, this is this is definitely something you could do with a partner you do not share flash cards but you share the experience of making them thank you for the question that's a good one so it covered speaking fluently but now in our next segment we go is coming up we're going to talk actually what dough I actually talk about it. So tell us more about that we're going to go over the science of making friends basically going to see what it is to communicate with someone which applies to any language including english I mean uh what is it that connects you with someone else? What is it that makes you have a conversation that you actually want to continue brother, the conversation you'd rather just sort of leave the room with on dso that's going to be the main content there, that's. Interesting is jamie and I were talking about that lunch break earlier on. So staging for that still to come, I think that's going to really interesting final segment.

Class Description

Speaking a foreign language gives you more sophisticated problem-solving skills, more tools for multitasking and expressing yourself, and opens up more career opportunities – not to mention the ability to more fully immerse yourself in other cultures. But learning a new language can be an unmanageably long endeavor. Join Gabriel Wyner to learn how you can become (and stay) fluent in a new language in months, not years.

Throughout this course, you’ll explore memorization tools, linguistic concepts, and free software that will ensure fluency in the shortest amount of time possible. You’ll learn about the four essential stages of language acquisition: understanding correct pronunciation, building vocabulary and grammar skills, reading and listening effectively, and conversing with native speakers. You’ll also learn about antiquated methods to avoid (such as translating between new and native languages) and cutting-edge new techniques that ensure maximum absorption and retention.

By the end of this course, you’ll have an easy system for learning a new language, retaining, and expressing yourself as quickly as possible.

Nephele Tempest

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Worth every penny. Despite the title, you'll learn far more than how to become fluent in a language -- you'll learn how to learn anything you want! Gabe is a great presentational speaker, articulate and captivating.
The foundation of the course is about how to set a concrete and measurable goal, learn effectively, and set yourself up for success. This course addresses forming new habits within the constraints of your current life, making progress when you don't feel motivated, and how to recover from setbacks like getting off-track or when you just don't grasp a concept--these topics are often missing from other learning courses so students flounder as soon as they stray from the formula. Building on all these fundamentals, Gabe then offers specific techniques and tools for language learning. Excellent course!